We know what works to save smokers' lives we just have to do it

Smoking's reputation is well earned. For all the addiction that plagues us, smoking harms every organ in the body, and tobacco is the only product known to kill over half of those who use it.

In fact, 480,000 people lose their lives to tobacco-related illness every year, and of those, nearly one in 10 aren't smokers they're killed by secondhand smoke. Those statistics come from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) 50-year progress report on fighting tobacco, and they actually represent a dramatic improvement. When one considers that 1,300 lives are lost to tobacco every day, it's not surprising that the same report suggests nearly seven in 10 adult cigarette smokers want to quit.

Helping smokers quit, and preventing kids from picking it up, requires communities to step up and support the health of their residents. They must enact policies that give people battling this addiction a fighting chance, because when they do, study after study shows lives are being saved.

Smoking's costs are enormous, but tobacco control practices work

Each year, adult smoking alone causes nearly $170 billion in direct medical costs . This amount is equal to what Forbes reported this spring as the value of the world's most expensive brand Apple Inc. Unfortunately, our children are bearing the burden of the tobacco epidemic because more than 3,800 young people start to smoke every day.

The good news is that state and community interventions work. Consider Hawaii according to the CDC , its comprehensive approach to tobacco control has helped people quit and kept people from starting, while also addressing secondhand smoke. Critically, the state raised its cigarette tax to $3.20 and the legal age for sale of tobacco products to 21. As a result, the high school smoking rate is 5 percent below the national average and the state has a new "clean-air" public health standard.

The pattern follows across the country, as evidenced by recent findings from the U.S. Community Preventive Services Task Force. They are an independent advisory panel of doctors, researchers and other health experts who advise national policy, and in their community guide on helping Americans quit , they found strong scientific evidence that smoke-free policies work. Communities which enacted policies to protect the health of residents consistently saw tobacco use fall, along with declines in morbidity and mortality and hospital admissions related to asthma.

Policy is just one element of a comprehensive approach to fight tobacco, and must be matched with cessation programs, prevention programs and taxes on products. Whether implemented on a college campus or across a state, such comprehensive tobacco control saves lives.

Spread the health

To achieve a truly meaningful drop in tobacco-related deaths, more states and communities will need to invest in health. In a report from the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, North Dakota is the only U.S. state to spend the CDC-recommended level for comprehensive tobacco control. In fact, the state exceeds it. Every other state falls short, with the bottom sevenGeorgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Washington, New Hampshire, Missouri and New Jerseyspending less than 2 percent of the recommended amount. In fact, New Jersey spent exactly $0.

National policies are protecting the health of some communities, such as a Housing and Urban Development (HUD) smoke-free public housing rule , but local and state efforts can have the greatest effect. At the National Jewish Health tobacco quitline, we're often called in to act on the cessation element at times helping even at the individual business level if a company decides to enact a tobacco-free policy. Every part of comprehensive tobacco control helps improve the health and quality of lives of individuals.

If each business acted as aggressively on policy, or every state invested as heavily in community health as North Dakota or Hawaii, thousands of lives would be saved. Progress is slow and sparse, rather than quick and universal, even though the benefits far outweigh the costs. The CDC refers to the tobacco fight as a Winnable Battle , and they are quick to point out that by the middle of 2016, 60 percent of Americans were protected by comprehensive laws to make indoor areas of restaurants, workplaces and bars 100 percent smoke free.

One policy will not work for every community, but we do know what works. If we woke up tomorrow and someone said, "We have a cure for cancer!" the nation would rejoice. We have a cure for tobacco dependence, and the half million Americans it kills each year we need to rejoice, and we need to act.

Amy Lukowski is Clinical Director for Health Initiatives (QuitLogix) and Associate Professor at National Jewish Health , and Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Colorado School of Medicine